This chapter begins by providing an overview of variables and scales of measurement, followed by a general description of common descriptive statistics used in social science analyses. We then introduce R to calculate these descriptive statistics, first for the dataset overall and then by specific categories. By the end of this chapter, readers will be able to (a) describe the different scales of measurement used in social science statistical analysis, (b) identify the types of variables and variable terminology used in social science statistical analysis, (c) calculate and interpret the most common types of descriptive statistics, (d) understand and describe distributions, (e) compute and interpret percentiles and Z values, and (f) work with other scaled scores.